The Lost Riots

Sony; 2004

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The lone figure of a long-dead fascist dictator flutters to the ground, eyes burning out death rays, mouth moving maniacally. The skyline of the city behind is aflame as hordes of victims and refugees of the last days of capitalism mill and surge to escape some unknown terror. Suddenly, a great leader, our savior, morphs into a giant bald eagle, snapping and chewing as he devours his supplicants in snatches. The sky darkens. And then a vacuous-looking man slides into view, mouthing along to some utterly benign, meaningless and clumsy lyrics. This is no "vision"-- it's just another stupid music video for another stupid band. Watching MTV these days sort of gives you the feeling that some bands are trying way too hard.

One of those bands is Hope of the States, who have received rapturous press in the UK, with critics rolling out heavy names as reference points-- Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Radiohead, Mogwai, Manic Street Preachers. Oh, and Muse, which seems appropriate because Hope of the States make big-budget music mostly in that vein. These are summer-blockbuster songs, overdriven and overproduced simply because they can be, with little-to-no actual substance behind the heavy-effects bluescreen. Hope of the States waste no time getting to the point on The Lost Riots, their musical ID4: The opening instrumental "The Black Amnesias" begins with a solitary, maudlin, plucked guitar line and escalates slowly, pausing dramatically here and there until it explodes into an immense epic rock-opera piece, complete with wailing violins and high-diving crescendos. It is exquisitely horrible.

The Lost Riots, like the aforementioned music video, plays on terrifying, portentous imagery throughout. Ruins and riots and fires and chaos are littered and strewn across the songs. An ever-present shadowy enemy seems to straddle the mess, but even when picking through the concrete debris and digging for scraps below the surface, the clues and signs crumble away in your fingers. It's impossible to determine whom Hope of the States are railing against: George Bush and the U.S.? The West in general? Capitalism? But I guess it's important that they're pissed off about something. Yeah. It's important to have fire. It gives you something to write an album about. But after removing the immense weight of the music, there's an emptiness to the songs at their core. And strangely, singer Sam Herlihy admits as much when he claims on "Me Ves y Sufres" that, "I used to think I had something to say/ But my dumb ideologies gave me away."

Nonetheless, The Lost Riots contains a few impressive moments. Single "The Red the White the Black the Blue" is an abrasive rallying cry backed with spiraling pianos and Godspeed guitars. "Black Dollar Bills" is even better, meshing a soft piano lullaby with a total post-rock meltdown. But these two passable tracks can't forgive the rest of the whole, on which Hope of the States are merely shadowboxing. Until they focus more accurately on their targets, this band's moments of greatness will be fleeting, weighted down and muffled by the roar of empty noise-- a B-52, payload spent.